GROW YOUR MANUSCRIPT YOUR WAYTailor-made for creating long manuscripts, Scrivener lets you break up your writing into sections as small or large as you like. At its heart is a simple ring-binder metaphor—gather material and switch between writing, notes and research with ease. Got a great idea but don’t know where it fits? Compose your text in any order you want—write when inspiration strikes and find its place later.

SEE THE FOREST *OR* THE TREESWhether you plan or plunge, Scrivener works your way: hammer out every last detail before typing a word, or carve out a draft and restructure later. Or do a bit of both. All text sections in Scrivener are integrated with an easy-to-use project outline, so working with an overview of your manuscript is only ever a click away, and turning Chapter Four into Chapter One is as simple as drag and drop.

RESEARCH WITHIN REACHNeed to refer to research? In Scrivener, your background material is always at hand, and you can open it right alongside what you’re working on. Write a description based on a photograph. Transcribe an interview. Or check for consistency against an earlier chapter.

GETTING IT OUT THEREOnce you’re ready to share your work with the world, turn your manuscript into a beautiful ebook or PDF, export to Word, or simply print it out. You can even share using different formatting, so that you can write in your favorite font and still keep your editor happy.

Scrivener’s users include best-selling novelists, screenwriters, students, academics, lawyers, journalists and translators. It won’t tell you how to write—it just provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing.

FEATURES

Get Started• Project templates for novels, scripts, essays and more• Import many different types of file• Easily split imported text into separate sections

Find Your Structure• Write in any order and reorganize later• Assign a synopsis to any section, then work with an overview of your manuscript in the outliner• Plot your ideas using the corkboard• Track different threads using labels• Fast project-wide search• Apply custom icons to your sections• Use document templates for new sections (e.g. character sheets in novels)

Get it Out There• Compile to a single document for sharing or printing• Export to Word• Print or create PDF files• Create Epub and Kindle files• Export to Final Draft• Supports MultiMarkdown and LaTeX export• Convert rich text to Markdown

What’s New

Version History

3.1.1

Nov 27, 2018

Note: 3.1.1 is a patch for 3.1. It fixes a bug that could cause a 10.14 crash on startup for existing users who had customised their appearance preferences.

DARK MODE• Full support for dark mode on macOS 10.14.• Scrivener’s “Appearance” preferences allow you to take full control over colours and UI in each mode.• Switch between dark and light mode independently of the system settings using the Scrivener > Appearance menu.• Set up different colour themes for each mode via the Preferences, and switch between them using the Scrivener > Themes menu.

SCRIPTWRITING• Support for “MORE” and “CONT’D” when compiling for PDF and printing. (See new settings in the “Text Layout” area of the Compile format editor.)• Support for not splitting sentences across pages in scripts.• Dual dialogue support for print and PDF.

COMPILE• You can now include a cover image when compiling to PDF.• Enhanced options for compiling for print-on demand services, including an option for PDF files to use the PDF/X-3 format.• Epub 3 and Kindle KF8 formats now allow for direct formatting. With these changes, the older ePub 2 and Kindle Mobi formats have been removed, and will only be available for Compile formats created in older versions that rely on them.• Epub export now supports inline MathML equations generated by MathType.• It is now much easier to edit section layouts: a pencil icon appears when you move the mouse over a section layout in the main Compile window. Simply click on it (or double-click the layout) to begin editing.• Unused section types are now hidden by default in Compile’s “Assign Section Types”.• Section Layouts in the Compile format editor are now displayed in bold if they are used in the project, making it easier to identify the layouts you are most interested in.• Improvements have been made to footnotes in print and PDF, including several new options for how they are laid out.Many, many other enhancements to Compile.

FOCUS MODE• A new “focus mode” is available via View > Text Editing > Focus. This allows you to fade out everything except the current line, sentence or paragraph as you write. The mode can be set independently for the main window and Compose.

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS• Widow and orphan control now supported in Scrivener’s page view. (Off by default - use the “Editing” Preferences to turn it on.)• Widow and orphan control now supported when compiling to PDF or for printing.• Keep with Next has also been improved, and you can now determine whether the KWN paragraph itself can be split across pages or not.

3.1

Nov 8, 2018

DARK MODE• Full support for dark mode on macOS 10.14. Every single icon and UI element has been redesigned or tweaked for dark mode.• Scrivener’s “Appearance” preferences allow you to take full control over colours and UI in each mode.• Switch between dark and light mode independently of the system settings using the Scrivener > Appearance menu.• Set up different colour themes for each mode via the Preferences, and switch between them using the Scrivener > Themes menu.

SCRIPTWRITING• Support for “MORE” and “CONT’D” when compiling for PDF and printing. (See new settings in the “Text Layout” area of the Compile format editor.)• Support for not splitting sentences across pages in scripts.• Dual dialogue support for print and PDF.

COMPILE• You can now include a cover image when compiling to PDF.• Enhanced options for compiling for print-on demand services, including an option for PDF files to use the PDF/X-3 format.• Epub 3 and Kindle KF8 formats now allow for direct formatting. With these changes, the older ePub 2 and Kindle Mobi formats have been removed, and will only be available for Compile formats created in older versions that rely on them.• Epub export now supports inline MathML equations generated by MathType.• It is now much easier to edit section layouts: a pencil icon appears when you move the mouse over a section layout in the main Compile window. Simply click on it (or double-click the layout) to begin editing.• Unused section types are now hidden by default in Compile’s “Assign Section Types”.• Section Layouts in the Compile format editor are now displayed in bold if they are used in the project, making it easier to identify the layouts you are most interested in.• Improvements have been made to footnotes in print and PDF, including several new options for how they are laid out.Many, many other enhancements to Compile.

FOCUS MODE• A new “focus mode” is available via View > Text Editing > Focus. This allows you to fade out everything except the current line, sentence or paragraph as you write. The mode can be set independently for the main window and Compose.

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS• Widow and orphan control now supported in Scrivener’s page view. (Off by default - use the “Editing” Preferences to turn it on.)• Widow and orphan control now supported when compiling to PDF or for printing.• Keep with Next has also been improved, and you can now determine whether the KWN paragraph itself can be split across pages or not.

3.0.3

Jun 21, 2018

COMPILE• Added a “Vellum Export” Compile format for use with .docx. This makes it easy to export a Word document that is formatted ready for import into Vellum, the self-publishing app for macOS.• Tweaked HTML5 export for ePub and Kindle formats to work around an issue whereby Kindle Previewer and Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature could scramble certain characters.• ePub now supports the “Book begins after front matter” option.• Added an “Optimize for Kindle conversion” checkbox for ePub 3 export for submitting to self-publishing services that require ePub files even for Amazon publication.• Scrivener’s MultiMarkdown support has been updated to version 6.• New MultiMarkdown and LaTeX project templates and Compile formats added.• The $include placeholder tag now works in title prefixes and suffixes and Section Layout prefixes and suffixes.• The $date, $createdDate and $modifiedDate placeholders now allow for custom date formats (e.g. by using $date:HH:ss:mm).• Added options for controlling the header and footer margins for print and PDF.• Added an option to override style names during Compile, which can be useful for meeting specific formatting requirements.• When compiling a subgroup, if “Treat compile group as complete manuscript” is ticked, Scrivener now looks inside the front and back matter folders for a subfolder that matches the compile group name, and if one is found, uses that for the front or back matter instead of the entire folder. This makes it much easier for users writing multiple books inside a single project to switch between different books when compiling.

OTHER• Added “Apply Keywords to Selected Documents” and “Remove Keywords from Selected Documents” to the Keywords panel contextual menu, making it easier to add and remove keywords to and from multiple documents.• Improved dotted underline drawing in the editor as well as for printing and PDF export.• Improved “Select Similar Formatting” to work better with styles.• You can now insert media time stamps into the Inspector and Copyholders as well as the main editor.• Improvements made to highlights in PDF files.• It is now possible to disable smart quotes separately from hyphens and ellipses for script mode in the “Corrections” Preferences.• You can now copy the link in the footer below an imported web page using the contextual menu.• “Sort” options moved from Edit > Move to a dedicated Edit > Sort menu.• Sorting is now supported in bookmarks.• The size of comment popovers now takes into consideration the text scale.• Worked around a bug in macOS whereby images in the editor could become faded after a save and reload.• Many, many more refinements and bug fixes.

3.0.2

Mar 6, 2018

COMPILE• Added ability to preserve centering and indents on a Section Layout basis.• Added a new $pageGroupParentTitle placeholder which can be used in headers and footers to show the name of the part containing the current chapter.• Fixed bug whereby Kindle ebook validation would fail because of a table of contents problem.

EDITOR• Text completions and emojis can now be added to Scrivener’s editor Touch Bar.• “Heading” and “Title” paragraph styles now use Keep-with-Next by default in new projects.• Added “Reload from Original Image” option to contextual menu for images linked in text.• Collapsed footnotes and comments in the Inspector now use an icon rather than text to indicate their type, allowing more room for a preview of the content.

MEDIA AND WEB• When viewing audio files, the playback controls no longer fade out but remain visible.• Added ability to insert the time stamp of a media file (Insert > Media Time Stamp - note that you must have a media file in the other editor to use this). You can set the format used for this stamp in the Behaviors > Playback Preferences.• Added “Allow limited navigation in web pages” option to “Navigation” Preferences. When ticked, you can navigate around imported web pages to some extent. When this option is off, you can hold down Option when clicking in a web page to force the link to open inside Scrivener’s browser.• When resolving alias files, Scrivener no longer tries to mount external volumes, which could cause slowdown.

SCRIPTWRITING• Added “Paste Plain Text as Screenplay” to the “Edit” menu (only available when editing a script document). This makes it easier to paste into Scrivener from Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter.• Added 1.2 line spacing as an option to Script Settings.• It is now possible to set script mode to insert text at the start of a line when hitting tab (under the Tab/Return area of Script Settings).• Added a new $mediaPlaybackTime placeholder that can only be used inside the tab “Insert” fields of Script Settings. This can be used to automatically insert the current playback time of a video or sound file in the other editor by simply hitting tab.• Added a new “Transcript” script format that takes advantage of the new time stamp placeholder, intended for use while working with a video or sound file in the other editor.

STATISTICS• Project Statistics now show the average, longest and shortest document lengths.• Added “Show allowance in progress bar” option to document target settings. When ticked, the overflow allowance is shown in the right side of the bar.

OTHER• Added an option to the “Behaviors” Preferences to turn off 3.0’s new behaviour of deleting text dragged out of the editor to other areas of the project.• Added an option to exclude the screenshot when tweeting Project Targets (“Include screenshot when using Twitter service in Project Targets”, available in the General > Services area of Preferences).• Many, many refinements and bug fixes.

3.0.1

Dec 21, 2017

• Numerous minor enhancements and bug fixes to Compile.• ePub 3 and KF8 formats now support underlines without needing to use styles.• ePub 3 and KF8 now support the “Transformations” options pane in Compile for converting italics to underlines (and vice versa) and converting smart punctuation to dumb punctuation.• You can now set images inserted using the $img tag to use a percentage size in ebooks using the new “ebook” placeholder tag (see Help > List of All Placeholders… for details).• Tabbed windows are now restored when Scrivener is reopened (and Quick Reference panels remember their tabbed states per-project).• When loading a Copyholder by Option-dropping, if you hold down Option at the start of the drag in the binder, the Copyholder will now get the focus. (Only hold down Option on drop to leave the focus as it was.)• Either Option or Command can now be used to open comments in a popover instead of the Inspector (since Option-clicks do not work on all systems).• Added option to turn off border to current line highlight.• If any Preferences Themes are saved, a “Themes” submenu now appears in the “Scrivener” menu, allowing you to switch between themes more easily.• There are now more options available when saving a Preferences theme. It is now possible, for instance, to save a theme that only affects Composition mode colours, or a theme that affects everything else except Composition mode colours.• Full width labels in the binder no longer span the entire width of the binder, but are indented and more like the Scrivener 2 labels.• When Ctrl-clicking on the Trash folder in the binder, a minimal menu is now shown that includes “Empty Trash…”.• When opening the tutorial project, Scrivener will now prompt you to update it if there is a newer version of the tutorial available. (This will take effect for future tutorial updates.)• Added a “Convert Markdown” option to Import & Split, which converts all Markdown to rich text for the imported documents.• When a group higher up in the hierarchy determines the “Structure-Based” Section Type via its “Default Subdocument Type” setting, this is now indicated in brackets after “Structure-Based” in the menu.• It is now possible to make the main window narrower when there is no vertical split.• Many, many refinements and bug fixes.

3.0

Nov 27, 2017

Nov 27, 2018

Version 3.1.1

Note: 3.1.1 is a patch for 3.1. It fixes a bug that could cause a 10.14 crash on startup for existing users who had customised their appearance preferences.

DARK MODE• Full support for dark mode on macOS 10.14.• Scrivener’s “Appearance” preferences allow you to take full control over colours and UI in each mode.• Switch between dark and light mode independently of the system settings using the Scrivener > Appearance menu.• Set up different colour themes for each mode via the Preferences, and switch between them using the Scrivener > Themes menu.

SCRIPTWRITING• Support for “MORE” and “CONT’D” when compiling for PDF and printing. (See new settings in the “Text Layout” area of the Compile format editor.)• Support for not splitting sentences across pages in scripts.• Dual dialogue support for print and PDF.

COMPILE• You can now include a cover image when compiling to PDF.• Enhanced options for compiling for print-on demand services, including an option for PDF files to use the PDF/X-3 format.• Epub 3 and Kindle KF8 formats now allow for direct formatting. With these changes, the older ePub 2 and Kindle Mobi formats have been removed, and will only be available for Compile formats created in older versions that rely on them.• Epub export now supports inline MathML equations generated by MathType.• It is now much easier to edit section layouts: a pencil icon appears when you move the mouse over a section layout in the main Compile window. Simply click on it (or double-click the layout) to begin editing.• Unused section types are now hidden by default in Compile’s “Assign Section Types”.• Section Layouts in the Compile format editor are now displayed in bold if they are used in the project, making it easier to identify the layouts you are most interested in.• Improvements have been made to footnotes in print and PDF, including several new options for how they are laid out.Many, many other enhancements to Compile.

FOCUS MODE• A new “focus mode” is available via View > Text Editing > Focus. This allows you to fade out everything except the current line, sentence or paragraph as you write. The mode can be set independently for the main window and Compose.

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS• Widow and orphan control now supported in Scrivener’s page view. (Off by default - use the “Editing” Preferences to turn it on.)• Widow and orphan control now supported when compiling to PDF or for printing.• Keep with Next has also been improved, and you can now determine whether the KWN paragraph itself can be split across pages or not.

Ratings and Reviews

4.7 out of 5

401 Ratings

401 Ratings

Sydney6899
,10/27/2018

Amazing Product

I’ve been using Scrivener now for a long time. Started using it on my iPhone/iPad, and then I bought a Mac (finally) and purchased V3. I’ve been using this now on my Mac for over a year and I have zero issues with any of my many projects syncing between devices. They give instructions on their website how best to set up the save option so nothing can become corrupt. I currently have fifteen projects in varying stages and zero issues with any of them. Keith is very responsive as well. I’ve written to him about a glitch, he responded very quickly, and in the next version release, it was corrected. This is an invaluable tool for me and I’ve used SO many other writing programs that I can say, for me, this is hands down THE best product I have ever used. Dropbox sync works great. Syncing between my phone and pad work great. I know they are working on dark mode, it is in BETA release right now and will be implemented in 3.1 (it’s on their website). Honestly, I don’t know what woud have become of my writing had I not found this product when I did. Can’t wait to see what future releases have in store!

Sydney6899
,10/27/2018

Amazing Product

I’ve been using Scrivener now for a long time. Started using it on my iPhone/iPad, and then I bought a Mac (finally) and purchased V3. I’ve been using this now on my Mac for over a year and I have zero issues with any of my many projects syncing between devices. They give instructions on their website how best to set up the save option so nothing can become corrupt. I currently have fifteen projects in varying stages and zero issues with any of them. Keith is very responsive as well. I’ve written to him about a glitch, he responded very quickly, and in the next version release, it was corrected. This is an invaluable tool for me and I’ve used SO many other writing programs that I can say, for me, this is hands down THE best product I have ever used. Dropbox sync works great. Syncing between my phone and pad work great. I know they are working on dark mode, it is in BETA release right now and will be implemented in 3.1 (it’s on their website). Honestly, I don’t know what woud have become of my writing had I not found this product when I did. Can’t wait to see what future releases have in store!

eaglepup
,02/01/2018

Great tool for writing

I have been using Scrivener for a couple years now, and love the way I can organize things within the app. I like to use one file for each set of related stories, and it easily lets me both write my novels and look up any notes. Importing my version 2 file into version 3 was easy, and I haven't seen any problems using it on my mac.

I love the bookmark features in version 3, but wish there was a setting to always “open in other editor” from the drop down menu. It would make things faster for those of us with poorer eyesight as the window provided is just too small to read most things. Great idea, but I need to either keep resizing the right panel or use the drop down menu instead of just clicking on it. Still a great improvement over version 2. As someone who manages many files within Scrivener, this makes finding the file I want much easier. This feature was my reason for updating as Scrivener 2 was working just fine for me.

eaglepup
,02/01/2018

Great tool for writing

I have been using Scrivener for a couple years now, and love the way I can organize things within the app. I like to use one file for each set of related stories, and it easily lets me both write my novels and look up any notes. Importing my version 2 file into version 3 was easy, and I haven't seen any problems using it on my mac.

I love the bookmark features in version 3, but wish there was a setting to always “open in other editor” from the drop down menu. It would make things faster for those of us with poorer eyesight as the window provided is just too small to read most things. Great idea, but I need to either keep resizing the right panel or use the drop down menu instead of just clicking on it. Still a great improvement over version 2. As someone who manages many files within Scrivener, this makes finding the file I want much easier. This feature was my reason for updating as Scrivener 2 was working just fine for me.

owliepueo
,05/06/2018

Long time user, recently upgraded

The old Scrivener was INVALUABLE* as I was writing my dissertation. Massive piece of work that was. The new Scrivener is INVALUABLE** as I write numerous long reports (usually 30 pages +).* Sorry about the cyber-shouting**Sorry again for the cyber-shouting

Honestly I don’t know how things changed from the older version but, hey, I still love it. I just use the very basic features and even those basics offer an invaluable tool to constructing a long research reports.

I have a chaotic mind that loves to multi-task and brainstorm. I love Scrivener because I can create a structure so that I may begin to insert pieces of “inspiration” into that structure. Say I create a shell with all the chapters (or just use the templates). I have ideas about wanting to discuss this or that in my report. I can just randomly insert these ideas into the structure, and, move them around later.

I also love that I am able to cut chapters into smaller chunks so I may concentrate on just one section of one chapter, for example. My chaotic, busy mind sometimes needs that space to focus on one detail. I can then look at the whole project (side bar, list of documents) and make sure the whole structure of the report is robust. I can track progress, write notes, and do so much more.

Can’t live without you, Scrivener1,2,3, whatever version you are!

owliepueo
,05/06/2018

Long time user, recently upgraded

The old Scrivener was INVALUABLE* as I was writing my dissertation. Massive piece of work that was. The new Scrivener is INVALUABLE** as I write numerous long reports (usually 30 pages +).* Sorry about the cyber-shouting**Sorry again for the cyber-shouting

Honestly I don’t know how things changed from the older version but, hey, I still love it. I just use the very basic features and even those basics offer an invaluable tool to constructing a long research reports.

I have a chaotic mind that loves to multi-task and brainstorm. I love Scrivener because I can create a structure so that I may begin to insert pieces of “inspiration” into that structure. Say I create a shell with all the chapters (or just use the templates). I have ideas about wanting to discuss this or that in my report. I can just randomly insert these ideas into the structure, and, move them around later.

I also love that I am able to cut chapters into smaller chunks so I may concentrate on just one section of one chapter, for example. My chaotic, busy mind sometimes needs that space to focus on one detail. I can then look at the whole project (side bar, list of documents) and make sure the whole structure of the report is robust. I can track progress, write notes, and do so much more.